Monday, June 24, 2013

Mammoth trial run, and Bitz Exchange Picnic!

On Saturday the 22nd my local gaming group, Ordo Ineptus, held it's first Bitz Exchange picnic! The idea being everyone brings food and their piles of unused/unloved/unwanted bitz, and have a barbecue and trade toys!

A brilliant idea, right! Our man Tim put this together....big shout to him for making it happen!

But before I went to the picnic, I tried out the Mammoth!

I met "Warpriest" from Ordo Ineptus from the club at Hobbytown for a quick, friendly game. I learned that Mammoths are NOT friendly. Big thanks to Warpriest for his patience...I was almost an hour late and had 3 kids in tow as the wife had to work...lots of little distractions during the game!

Warpriest was playing Menoth, a faction I know very little about (other than that Sean kicks the shit out of me with whatever nonsense he uses!) I don't even know the name of the Caster he used...some chick that was really in to fire...candelwax on the nipples, that kind of thing. He had three heavy jacks, 2 of them with guns (that set things on fire!) and one with a shield and what looked to be a reach flail thing. Sorry, I'm kind of a WM/H newb, I don't know what these things are called!

He also had a Menoth standard in the Choir and two Vassals. Daughters of the Flame and Nicia, as well as a Seneschal.

He deployed first, castling up the jacks with squishies behind. I had no idea what I was doing, so had a really tasteless and useless deployment that, well, sucked...

Then the Ladies all Advance Deployed, and I found I was fighting a 2-front battle. He moved everything up super fast, cast some upkeeps and passed the turn to me. I was wishy-washy, unable to get a good idea of the order of activation I needed to do, so just ended up squirming around a bit and lobbing shots from the Mammoth in to the Daughters, which left only 2 of them alive and gave the Cyclops a clear shot on the stealthy Nicia, taking her down as well.

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Holy crap those girls are coming over here fast!

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As I was distracted with kids a lot from here out, I don't have a good grasp of the specifics. He ran forward again, taking a long-range shot at the Agonizer, which set it alight but failed to kill it. I was then able to run the Agonizer up enough to cover all 3 jacks, position the Gladiator for some Pathfinding goodness, and hide the Squishies behind Hexeris.

He ran the two surviving Daughters to surround Hexerix, and advanced the two shooty jacks who, without focus, were unable to do much besides finish off the Agonizer and one of the Beast Handlers.

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Hexeris Threshered down the Daughters, while the Gladiator pulled off his Slam trick to knock down two enemy Jacks, and nearly finish off one of them with a few bought attacks. The Mammoth, Enraged by his Handlers, charged in and finished them both off.

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Note the great Grand Slam lineup there, and the Mammoth cleaned up.

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He had his last surviving Jack load up on buffs and charge the Mammoth...leaving the Mammoth with 7 total boxes and no lost aspects. Nice! The Gladiator finished off that Jack, the Mammoth cleared out models around his Warcaster, and Hexeris moved up behind the Mammoth, channeled Hellfire to bring his caster to within a few boxes, then feated, sucked up a full load of fury, did it again for a caster kill win!

I felt a bit out of touch with the list...I'm not in practice playing Warmachine and I struggled every turn to figure out who needed to do what first, but it worked out regardless, in no small part due to some strong damage rolls on my part and some weak ones on his. Either way, the list did what I expected it to, and I barely scratched the surface of the tricks I can pull off with it! Thanks to Warpriest for a very fun and educational game!

After the cleanup, we went to the picnic, had burgers and bread (I bought a bread machine, so have been making bread all the time now!), and had a really great time hanging out with friends I get to see far too seldom!
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Nick, Vince, Bobby, and little Ian set up a game of Star Wars Miniatures

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I took a picture of Tim taking a picture of me taking a picture of Tim taking a picture of me taking a picture of Tim....

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Arlin and George wade thru the copious Bitz

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Brian and Alayna pick thru the fun toys

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A big thanks to Tim for putting together such an awesome event! Thanks for the bitz I picked up (a second Soul Grinder Fantasy base and some chaos spikey bitz for a SkullCannon project I have in mind) and thanks for helping entertain my kids everyone!

So in 40k news, Mike Brandt of Nova posted on his blog that he's hosting a small RTT for Charity this coming Saturday. I jokingly sent the link to my wife, who said, "Go ahead, go have fun. Why not?" So...I'm leaving work early on Friday, driving down to stay the night on someones couch, chipping in for charity and hoping to have some fun and light-hearted games of 40k with some great people!

I'll be taking the exact same list I used at Killadelphia. I'd like to say I have a magic answer for how to deal with Tau or Eldar, but the reality is I don't have any answers, and am resigned to not having the most competitive list in the every-changing meta, so will just go, have fun, roll dice, and drink Mike's beer! :)

About the Mammoth! Not sure if I mentioned this before, but he came mis-packaged having two left feet and no right...the name of the army is now, of course, "Mammoth Don't Dance!". I've since gotten the replacement limb from PP, and have all the big parts done on him, including magnetizing his head so I can actually get his base in contact with other things! I'll post updated pics of him as his assembly continues...he's got about a hundred tassles and ropes and spikey parts left to put on...and as his painting gets underway!